Faith for the little things

I've been going through a pretty rough time the past couple weeks with some stressful situations. The biggest struggle was really with my faith. It wasn't so much a crisis of faith in that I questioned what I believe; it was more an issue of putting into practice what I do believe, particularly that God is in control and I need to trust Him to take care of me.

One of the reasons this problem came up is that I had not been trusting God in the little things. We can get by with a lot on this earth without God. Billions of unbelievers do it every day. Doing things that way seems to work out while circumstances are good. It doesn't lead to a life of joy or peace, but it's not really agony either. But what happens when something comes along that is more than we can handle without God?

If we don't trust Him for the little things, the every day things, if we're not trusting in Him when times are good, how can we expect to trust Him when times are bad?

No wonder the church isn't effective

I heard Michael Zimmerman on a radio program last night talking about the compatibility of Christianity and science. Zimmerman is a scientist who founded the
Clergy Letter Project, a statement that basically reduces the Bible to a book of "moral truths" in an effort to reconcile Christianity and science. Now I think that Christianity and science are 100% compatible, but I don't think you need to throw out the Bible to get there. I think it's a mistake for the Christian community to deny that species change over time -- it just makes us look stupid. But I think it's also a mistake to think that current scientific theory trumps God's word. Zimmerman did have one excellent point: science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. I would add to that that science will never be able to prove or disprove the Genesis creation story because you cannot evaluate the supernatural with natural methods.

Anyway, back to the title point: it's no wonder the church isn't as effective as it should be when you have thousands of Christian leaders willing to throw the idea of the Bible as the authoritative word of God out the window.

Groovy DOMBuilder namespace

I'm building some XML in Groovy and it's pretty rad. However, I had the hardest time figuring out how to make namespaces work the way I thought they should. The examples didn't seem to cover the case I needed. I eventually got it, so in case anyone else is trying to do this, here it is:

Update: this didn't actually work. It looks right when serialized, but the in-memory DOM doesn't have the correct Element implementation. I ended up writing a new NSDOMBuilder class.

import groovy.xml.DOMBuilder
import groovy.xml.QName
import javax.xml.XMLConstants

import org.w3c.dom.Element
import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatter
import org.joda.time.format.ISODateTimeFormat

DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter = ISODateTimeFormat.dateTimeNoMillis()
def builder = DOMBuilder.newInstance()
def now = new DateTime()
        
Element el = builder.'ebiz:GetInventoryConsumption'(releaseID:'9.0',
        xmlns:[(new QName(XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE_NS_URI, 'xmlns')):'http://www.openapplications.org/oagis/9',
               (new QName(XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE_NS_URI, 'xmlns:ebiz')):'http://www.dis-corp.com/xml/ebusiness/2.0']) {
    ApplicationArea() {
        Sender(InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName())
        CreationDateTime(dateTimeFormatter.print(now))
        BODID(UUID.randomUUID())
    }
    DataArea() {
        Get() {
            Expression()
        }
        InventoryConsumption() {
            'ebiz:InventoryConsumptionHeader'() {
                // stuff goes here
            }
        }
    }
}

Update 2. Here's the actual code:
HashMapStack.java

package groovy.xml;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.ListIterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;

public class HashMapStack
    implements Map
{
    private LinkedList stack = new LinkedList();

    public HashMapStack()
    {
        stack.add(new HashMap());
    }

    /**
     * Clears the whole structure.
     */
    public void clear()
    {
        stack.clear();
        stack.add(new HashMap());
    }

    public boolean containsKey(Object key)
    {
        for (ListIterator iter = stack.listIterator(stack.size()); iter.hasPrevious();)
        {
            Map map = (Map) iter.previous();
            if (map.containsKey(key))
            {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    public boolean containsValue(Object value)
    {
        for (ListIterator iter = stack.listIterator(stack.size()); iter.hasPrevious();)
        {
            Map map = (Map) iter.previous();
            if (map.containsValue(value))
            {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    public Set entrySet()
    {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

    public Object get(Object key)
    {
        for (ListIterator iter = stack.listIterator(stack.size()); iter.hasPrevious();)
        {
            Map map = (Map) iter.previous();
            if (map.containsKey(key))
            {
                return map.get(key);
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    public boolean isEmpty()
    {
        return false;
    }

    public Set keySet()
    {
        HashSet set = new HashSet();
        for (Iterator iter = stack.iterator(); iter.hasNext();)
        {
            Map map = (Map) iter.next();
            set.addAll(map.keySet());
        }
        return set;
    }

    /**
     * Only returns the value of the item replaced in the current frame, not in any lower frames.
     */
    public Object put(Object key, Object value)
    {
        return ((Map) stack.getLast()).put(key, value);
    }

    public void putAll(Map t)
    {
        ((Map) stack.getLast()).putAll(t);
    }

    /**
     * Only removes the key from the current frame.
     */
    public Object remove(Object key)
    {
        return ((Map) stack.getLast()).remove(key);
    }

    public int size()
    {
        return keySet().size();
    }

    public Collection values()
    {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

    public void push()
    {
        stack.add(new HashMap());
    }

    public void pop()
    {
        if (stack.size() > 1)
        {
            stack.removeLast();
        }
        else
        {
            throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException();
        }
    }
}

NSDOMBuilder.groovy

package groovy.xml

import javax.xml.namespace.QName
import groovy.xml.FactorySupport

import javax.xml.namespace.QName
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException

import org.w3c.dom.Document
import org.w3c.dom.Element
import org.w3c.dom.Node
import org.xml.sax.InputSource
import org.xml.sax.SAXException

class NSDOMBuilder extends BuilderSupport {
    
    private boolean namespaceAware
    private HashMapStack nsMap = new HashMapStack()
    private Document document
    private DocumentBuilder documentBuilder

    static NSDOMBuilder newInstance() throws ParserConfigurationException {
        return newInstance(false, true)
    }

    static NSDOMBuilder newInstance(boolean validating, boolean namespaceAware) throws ParserConfigurationException {
        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = FactorySupport.createDocumentBuilderFactory()
        factory.setNamespaceAware(namespaceAware)
        factory.setValidating(validating)
        return new NSDOMBuilder(factory.newDocumentBuilder())
    }

    static Document parse(Reader reader) throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException {
        return parse(reader, false, true)
    }

    static Document parse(Reader reader, boolean validating, boolean namespaceAware)
            throws SAXException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException {
        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = FactorySupport.createDocumentBuilderFactory()
        factory.setNamespaceAware(namespaceAware)
        factory.setValidating(validating)
        DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = factory.newDocumentBuilder()
        return documentBuilder.parse(new InputSource(reader))
    }

    NSDOMBuilder(Document document) {
        this(document, true)
    }

    NSDOMBuilder(Document document, boolean namespaceAware) {
        this.document = document
        this.namespaceAware = namespaceAware
    }

    NSDOMBuilder(DocumentBuilder documentBuilder) {
        this.documentBuilder = documentBuilder
        this.namespaceAware = documentBuilder.namespaceAware
    }

    protected void setParent(Object parent, Object child) {
        Node current = (Node) parent
        Node node = (Node) child

        current.appendChild(node)
    }

    protected Object createNode(Object name) {
        return createNode(name, [:])
    }

    protected Document createDocument() {
        if (documentBuilder == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("No Document or DOMImplementation available so cannot create Document")
        } else {
            return documentBuilder.newDocument()
        }
    }

    protected Object createNode(Object name, Object value) {
        Element element = (Element) createNode(name, [:])
        element.appendChild(document.createTextNode(value.toString()))
        return element
    }

    protected Object createNode(Object name, Map attributes, Object value) {
        Element element = (Element) createNode(name, attributes)
        element.appendChild(document.createTextNode(value.toString()))
        return element
    }

    protected Object createNode(Object name, Map attributes) {
        if (namespaceAware) {
         nsMap.push()
         
         for (Iterator iter = attributes.entrySet().iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
             def entry = iter.next()
             String attrName = entry.key.toString()
             if ("xmlns".equals(attrName) || attrName.startsWith("xmlns:")) {
                 String prefix = ''
                 if (attrName.startsWith("xmlns:")) {
                     prefix = attrName.substring(6)
                 }
                 nsMap.put(prefix, entry.value)
                 iter.remove()
             }
         }
        }

        if (document == null) {
            document = createDocument()
        }
        
        Element element
        
        if (namespaceAware) {
      def qname = parseQName(name)
         element = document.createElementNS(qname.namespaceURI, name)
        } else {
         element = document.createElement(name)
        }

        attributes.each { k, value ->
            String valueText = (value != null) ? value.toString() : ""
            element.setAttribute(k.toString(), valueText)
        }
        
        return element
    }
    
    protected void nodeCompleted(Object parent, Object node) {
        if (namespaceAware) {
         nsMap.pop()
        }
    }
    
    protected QName parseQName(String name) {
        String prefix = ''
        String localPart = name
        int i = name.indexOf(':')
        if (i > -1) {
            prefix = name.substring(0, i)
            localPart = name.substring(i + 1)
        }
        String namespaceURI = nsMap.get(prefix)
        return new QName(namespaceURI, localPart, prefix)
    }
}

Update 3: here's an example of how to actually use it.

    Element createGetSupplierPartyMaster(Dealer dealer, Customer customer = null)
    {
     assert dealer != null
     assert dealer.dealerId != null
     
        def builder = NSDOMBuilder.newInstance()
        
        def el = builder.'ebiz:GetSupplierPartyMaster'(releaseID:'9.0',
                                                       xmlns:'http://www.openapplications.org/oagis/9',
                                                       'xmlns:ebiz':'http://www.dis-corp.com/xml/ebusiness/2.0') {
            ApplicationArea() {
                Sender(InetAddress.localHost.hostName)
                CreationDateTime(dateTimeFormatter.print(new DateTime()))
                BODID(UUID.randomUUID())
            }
            DataArea() {
                Get() {
                    Expression()
                }
                SupplierPartyMaster() {
                    PartyIDs() {
                        ID(schemeURI:BODHelper.DEALER_SCHEME_URI, dealer.dealerId)
                        if (customer?.store)
                        {
                            ID(schemeURI:BODHelper.STORE_SCHEME_URI, customer.store.storeCode)
                        }
                    }
                    if (customer)
                    {
                     AccountIDs() {
                         ID(customer.customerNumber)
                     }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        el.ownerDocument.appendChild(el)
        return el
    }